Sunday 15 April 2012

Textile art - stitched and tied

The MOMA offers so much to so many including this untitled piece by Lee Bontecou created in 1961. Created from canvas, black fabric rawhide and soot it is tied together with copper wire. Perhaps the ultimate expression of "found objects" the soiled canvas was originally from a conveyor belt thrown out from a laundry that operated under Bontecou's East Village apartment. She stretched the fabric across sections of steel and fastened the stretched pieces with the copper wire. The piece expresses Bontecou's desire to explore relationships within her own United States, to other countries and to other worlds and tried to glimpse fear, hope, ugliness, beauty and mystery that is in all of us and she says hangs over young people today. Made in 1961 at a time when the invasion of the Bay of Pigs by the US failed, the US committed its first troops  to Vietnam and construction of the Berlin wall commenced. It was a time of great anxiety ... in the US as well as other parts of the world. (Paraphrased from information provided at MOMA)

1 comment:

Judy said...

and still it goes on